


A Dream of Black Wings

by TheVioletSunflower



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Depression, Hurting Carlos to make Cecil angst, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, POV Cecil, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-25
Updated: 2014-01-25
Packaged: 2018-01-09 23:12:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1151926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheVioletSunflower/pseuds/TheVioletSunflower
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cecil receives a worrying text from Carlos and ends up having to save his life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> If you're wondering about the title, it's the English translation of the first line in Palabras de Papel, which is the weather song a few episodes after this story takes place.
> 
> Also, in my defense, I wrote this before Carlos's character had been developed at all. I think they'd only been dating for like ten episodes at the time. Dylan hadn't even been hired yet. So this is EXTREMELY out of character.

"...and now, dear listeners, I give you the weather."  
I hit the button which would begin the pre-recorded message detailing the exact location and altitude of every cloud in the greater Night Vale region all coded into a song which was completelt indecipherable to the average listener, but which I am told could be understood by the alien gods who control our fates.  
I was glad for the automation taking over. It gave me time to check my phone which had been silently buzzing its text alert almost the entire time I had been in the recording studio. I flipped it open, smiling at the display which told me what I already knew: the message was from Carlos.  
Carlos and I had been dating for a few weeks now, and in that time he had never failed to text me during my radio show. I think he enjoyed knowing that I would be distracted on air thinking about him. My Carlos. My perfect, beautiful Carlos.  
The texts themselves were nothing special. Just usual couple stuff. "Watch out for the floating clouds of locusts on your way home", "There is strange, grey goop pouring out of my television", that sort of thing. But they gave me something to look forward to at the end of the show and during my brief breaks for pre-recorded messages.  
I clicked the "read text" button, and instantly sensed that something was wrong. Rather than the usual cute anecdote about his day, the text contained only two words. Two very strange and somewhat troubling words:  
"im sorry."  
A bit confused, I thought back over the past few days, but could think of nothing Carlos had done wrong. It must be something new, some perceived crime he had committed only in the last hour or so since my show started. Maybe he had burnt our dinner. Carlos was a notoriously bad cook, but he still insisted on making me supper at least once a week.  
I hit "reply" and typed the words "Sorry for what?"  
I hit "send".  
A few minutes passed.  
Carlos did not reply.  
Now this was truly odd. Carlos always texted me back immediately.  
My confusion was replaced by worry. What if something was wrong? What if something was stopping Carlos from texting me back? What if "im  
sorry" didn't mean "I'm sorry I forgot to baste the chicken". What if it meant "I'm sorry I won't be able to text you today because a hooded figure is about to eat my phone"? Or what if it was even worse than that. Could Carlos be in danger?  
I quickly put the thought out of my mind. Of course he wasn't in danger. Carlos was not one to be reckless. Then again, Carlos wasn't one to be cryptic either, and he certainly wasn't one to forget an apostrophe.  
I had been meaning to stop by Carlos' place in a few hours when I was done everything that needed doing at the station, but now... Perhaps it was best that I check. Just in case.  
I signalled intern Paolo to come into the recording booth and explained to him that I had something I had to do and if I wasn't back before the end of the weather, he should finish up for me. He was very excited to be given the chance to host his first radio show, even if just for a few minutes while I was out.  
I didn't wait for him to stop vibrating with excitement and gratitude before I ran out of the studio.  
\---  
The lights in Carlos' lab were out as I pulled up in front, but a soft glow from a window in the flat above suggested he had probably finished his work early and was lounging on his couch with a cup of his favourite orange spice tea and some of his home-made wheat-free multi-grain toast.  
I relaxed a little as I walked past the familiar chalkboards of equations and diagrams towards the stairs at the back which lead to his flat. Anything looks bigger and more frightening in small enclosed spaces like radio studios or cars or coffins. Here in the open spaces of the lab, however, I was sure that Carlos would almost certainly be just fine. I mean, if he was in trouble, he would say so, right? He wouldn't just leave a text  
saying "im sorry" and nothing else.  
Right?  
I knocked on Carlos' door and waited.  
He didn't come.  
I pushed back my fears and knocked again, louder this time.  
Nothing.  
Feeling my heart's uneven throbbing in my chest as the suppressed fears of the past few minutes overtook me, I tried the door knob.  
The door swung open easily.  
I entered the flat.  
Carlos' living room was clean as always, scrubbed to perfection by the incredibly tidy scientist who lived here. There was no sign of a struggle, but no sign of Carlos either. Silence lay like a thick and heavy fog over the entire flat.  
"Carlos?" I called into the silent room.  
There was no response.


	2. Chapter 2

The light I had seen from outside seemed to be coming from the bathroom, and was spilling out into the hall through the partially open door.  
"Carlos?" I called again, rapping my knuckles against the wood of the door as I slowly pushed it open, peeking tentatively into the room beyond.  
Carlos, beautiful Carlos, lay reclined in the bathtub, his eyes mostly closed, his perfect hair flattened against his skull by the water. He wasn't moving.  
The water was red.  
"Carlos," I said again, a wave of shock hitting me like a street cleaner.  
As I approached, I could see a long, deep cut running up Carlos' left forearm, bisecting a row of parallel scars he had kept hidden beneath his long lab coats and flannel. The cut and scars formed a row of identical crosses. A graveyard already claiming his body.  
"Carlos!"  
His body was limp as I shook him, willing him to live.  
"CARLOS!!!"  
His eyes rolled, sightless, back into his skull. His head lolled unresponsive to one side, brushing the water tinted with his own blood.  
Blood.  
So much blood.  
"Carlos." I bowed my head, knowing I had come too late. If only I hadn't waited until the weather to check my phone.  
"Cecil, you fool!" I cried, looking into his beautiful but lifeless eyes. The tears starting to form in my own eyes made his form dance before me, the illusion of motion on a face that could never move again.  
No. There it was again. A slight flicker of his eyelids. He was alive!  
"Carlos!" I cried with joy. "Hold on Carlos," I said as my eyes took a quick scan of the room, searching for a way to save him. "Just hold on. Please don't die. Please just hold on a few moments longer. For me"  
The bathroom was far messier than the living room had been, hidden as it was from prying eyes. Clothes lay scattered about. Jars of pills sat in a disorganized mess by the sink. A single piece of paper lay on the closed toilet lid, covered in neat lines of handwritten text.  
I shoved the later quickly in my pocket and dragged the man I loved from the still-warm bloody water. Thankfully, he hadn't been sitting in it for too long yet.  
I tore a sleeve from the pristine lab coat which had been discarded haphazardly on the floor, forcing myself to look through the tears now threatening to spill from my eyes as I used it to wrapped his arm tightly to stop the bleeding.  
Draping a towel over my shoulder, I heaved Carlos from the tiled floor, holding him close to my chest. His body was heavy, but clutching him to my chest I could feel his lungs softly expanding and contracting. Expanding and contracting. His breaths were shallow, but he was still alive. Still breathing.  
Still alive.  
My heart was beating against my ribs like a condemned man against the bars if his cage as I carried Carlos down the stairs.


	3. Chapter 3

Only after I had reached my car and laid Carlos down gently in the back seat, covering him with a towel to keep him warm, did I realize one important detail I had overlooked: I had no idea where to take Carlos.  
He needed a doctor, but the hospital was out of the question. The Sheriff's Secret Police did not look kindly on suicides, and Night Vale General Hospital was always surrounded by their blue helicopters. No, what I needed was somebody out of the way. A licensed doctor who could keep a sec-  
Teddy Williams.  
Carlos and Teddy didn't exactly see eye to eye. In fact, I had heard Carlos ues word like "deranged" and "lunatic" to describe the owner of The Desert Flower Bowling Alley and Arcade Fun Complex on more than one occasion. That being said, the bowling alley's owner had already treated Carlos after the incident with the underground city. He had saved his life once, he could save it again, right?  
Right?  
Imperfect as the situation was, I had no other choice, and Carlos was running out of time.  
There was not a scrap of light coming through the barricaded windows and doors of The Desert Flower Bowling Alley and Arcade Fun Complex as I gently lifted Carlos from the back seat. His breaths were ragged and uneven now, and blood had begun to soak through the makeshift bandage on his left forearm. Holding him tightly and making sure not to bump his injured limb, I carried him quickly past the bowling alley to Teddy's house next door.  
It took an agonizingly long time between the ringing of the doorbell and Teddy's appearance at the door.  
When he finally did answer, Teddy smiled widely at me. "Cecil!" he called, "what an unexpected surprise! To what do I- oh."  
His face dropped as his eyes fell on the broken body of the usually strong scientist cradled in my weakening arms. Without another word, Teddy stepped back, allowing me entrance to the house, guiding me through a glass-paneled door off the living room. I gently placed Carlos on the doctor's table which was the only furnishing in the small, white room beyond.  
At Teddy's request, I left the two of them in the white room to sit stiffly on the black, tentacled armchair in Teddy's living room. I was acutely aware of the fact that my boyfriend, my dearest Carlos, was quite possibly dying in the next room, and that I was powerless to help.  
I leaned back into the scaly depths of the armchair, allowing myself to cry for the first time since the flat. The salty tears stung my eyes as they poured down my cheeks. Great, heaving sobs shook my body like the devastating earthquakes Carlos tells me should be destroying the town. I tried to imagine my life without Carlos. I could not. I cried harder.  
I reached into my pocket with fingers stained by blood, in search of a tissue. I felt my fingertips brush against the piece of paper I had taken from Carlos' bathroom. I had forgotten it.  
It took me several minutes to stop crying enough to see what the paper was, and when I could see it, its contents only made me start crying all over again.  
It was a suicide note.  
It was addressed to me.  
"My dear Cecil," it read.  
"I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I wish there was a way I could do this without hurting you. I guess the only way to make this easier is to make sure you know why.  
"My whole life I’ve known that one of the worst sins you could commit was to love a man. My father never even allowed me to talk to the gay couple who lived down the street from us. All my life I’ve tried to deny I wanted to date men. I've tried to deny that I was anything but normal.  
"I wasn’t counting on meeting you. You are one thing I can't deny. I know it’s wrong to love you, but I can't help myself. I wish I could be with you without this horrible guilt, the way you are with me, but no matter how hard I try it's just not possible. I’m so, so sorry. Please don’t blame yourself Cecil. It’s not your fault. It’s all me.  
"Could you tell my father what happened to me? His phone number is on the back of this paper. We haven't talked since I left home, but I think he deserves to know what happened to his son. You probably shouldn't tell him about us. It would only make him angry.  
"I know you won’t understand this, and I wish you didn’t have to see me like this. I’m sorry I tried to hide this from you. I love you.  
"Goodbye, Cecil.  
"Carlos"  
Carlos. My dear, sweet Carlos. If only I'd known how much I didn't know about you. If only I'd been a better boyfriend, no, a better friend. The note made it clear that that was all Carlos could accept from me. I silently cursed myself for ever wanting more.  
I got up from the armchair and looked through the glass, trying desperately to find Carlos' eyes. But his eyes were lost to me, closed against the world as Teddy Williams meticulously stitched the cut on his arm closed.  
I knew I could never be with him, but I also knew that that would not stop me from wanting him to live, it would not stop me from loving him.  
He was Carlos. Intelligent, brave, industrious Carlos.  
I couldn't live without him.


	4. Chapter 4

It had been hours since I had left Carlos in the tiny room with Teddy Williams.  
Behind the glass-paneled door, I could see Teddy placing a line of bloodstones along Carlos' newly stitched wound and chanting. I imagined Carlos' face if he were awake to see this. He often scoffed at the chanting rituals of Night Vale citizens, calling them "childish superstition". Still, despite what the scientist may say about the rituals, I wasn't about to stop Teddy from doing everything he could to save the man I loved. Even if Carlos was right and the chanting didn't help, the bloodstones were licensed by city council, so they certainly couldn't hurt.  
I paced the room from one end to the other in a vain attempt to distract myself from the petrifying fear that all the bowling alley owner's knowledge of both medicine and ancient chants honouring long-forgotten deities would not be enough. I knew the pacing was doing nothing to help Carlos, but it felt good to be doing something, even if that something was nothing, so I paced anyways.  
The night had now passed the point at which it could be called late and was entering the realm of the early morning, but I had been unable to sleep. How could I when any moment could be Carlos' last?  
Too tired to continue pacing and with no tears left in my aching body, I collapsed once more into the armchair and leaned my head heavily in my hand, my eyes falling shut.  
The door opened. My head snapped up, my brain suddenly alert as Teddy stepped out into the living room.  
"Well Cecil," he said, rubbing his eyes, "it's been a long night."  
"How is he?" I asked, suddenly afraid of the answer I had stayed up all night to hear.  
"He's lost a lot of blood, Cecil. He's extremely weak. I don't think he'd have lasted even this long if you hadn't brought him to me when you did. But he's alive."  
At those long-awaited words, I felt every muscle in my body relax. Carlos was alive! He was okay! My eyes welled with tears again, but for a very different reason. I suddenly felt very, very tired.  
Teddy stared at me expectantly. I realized he had been saying something.  
"Sorry," I said, trying to sound like my world hadn't just been torn apart and put back together in the most beautiful way possible, "didn't catch that last bit."  
"I said, does he have any family? Parents? Siblings? Anybody who has the power to make medical decisions for him?"  
I started to reach for the note in my pocket and the phone number it contained, but then stopped as individual phrases from the note, which I had read so many times over the past few hours that it was almost memorized, rose to the surface of my mind. 'The greatest sin you could commit was dating a man.' 'Wouldn't even let me talk to the gay couple.' 'Probably shouldn't tell him about us.' I slowly dropped my hand back to my side, quickly making a decision which I hoped was the right one.  
"I'm his family."  
"Cecil, I can't let-"  
'I wish I could be with you without this horrible guilt.'  
"No, you can. I'm his family."  
Teddy sighed. "Under normal circumstances, I wouldn't let you do this. You've only been dating a few weeks for god's sake!"  
I bit my lip in worry as the doctor continued.  
"However, these are not normal circumstances. Carlos isn't from around here. None of us has any idea who his family are or how to contact them."  
Again, Carlos' note and the phone number it contained seemed almost to burn in my pocket, but I said nothing.  
"Of all of us, you probably know him best."  
At the moment, I didn't feel like I knew Carlos at all, but again I kept quiet.  
"And then there's the sleep talking."  
"Sleep talking?"  
"Yeah. He's completely unconscious, but he keeps mumbling. Just saying 'Cecil, Cecil, Cecil' over and over. That's about as close to giving you legal rights as you can get while unconscious, and given the circumstances, it's good enough for me."  
"He… he was saying my name?" I almost whispered, forcing down the threat of a fresh batch of tears.  
"Yeah. He seems mighty fond of you, Cecil. You should hold on to him."  
I nodded silently, hearing Carlos' words in my mind. 'The worst sin.' 'Horrible guilt.' I could hold on all I liked, but Carlos had clearly already let go.  
Suddenly, calling myself his family didn't seem like such a great idea.  
"You know, Cecil, as a licensed doctor I have the power to recommend people for re-education. We could get rid of a couple of those nasty memories for you. Only if you want us to, of course."  
I looked at Carlos through the glass door. He looked so beautiful sleeping on the table in the tiny white room. He could forget his guilt. He could be mine forever. I was in charge now. I had the power.  
I shook my head. "No, Teddy. Carlos' past makes him who he is. If we took that away, what's left isn't really him. I couldn't love him any other way."  
"I wasn't talking about Carlos," Teddy said, giving me a meaningful look. You've had a rough night, Cecil. A lot of shock to the system. You could forget it. Make it all go away."  
"No." I didn't even have to think about it. "I never want to forget this. I never want to take him for granted. I need to remember how much I love him when I thought I would lose him."  
Teddy nodded. "Well, if you're sure, I can't force you."  
"I'm sure."  
"Well okay then. Carlos should stay here tonight just in case, but I think he should be fine now. You can go sit with him if you like."  
I walked across the room for the thousandth time tonight, my knees shaking as I finally opened the glass door separating me from the man I loved despite the fact that he could not love me back.  
I sat in a hard wooden chair facing him and cupped his uninjured hand gently in both of my own, brushing it softly with my lips.  
My eyes closed, and I finally allowed myself to fall into a deep, dreamless sleep.


	5. Chapter 5

I woke when I felt Carlos beginning to stir, his right hand moving just slightly against my cheek where my head had fallen the night before. I glanced at the watch Carlos always wore on his wrist, the one he said was his most precious possession: the one true time piece in all of Night Vale. It was almost noon.  
I let go of Carlos' hand as he stirred again, watching his gorgeous dark eyes slowly open and focus blearily on my face.  
"Good morning," I said, unsure of the proper greeting for the occasion.  
"Cecil?" Carlos looked confused. "But… I'm dead. I died. I know I… Is this heaven?"  
I smiled. "No," I said, even though speaking to Carlos again after all the terror of last night felt as close to heaven as I could ever imagine.  
"How? What… what happened?"  
"Well, you weren't answering my texts, so I came to your flat and found you and brought you here." I gestured around the tiny white room. "It was a close call for a while, but Teddy says-"  
"Teddy? Teddy Williams? From the bowling alley?"  
I nodded.  
Carlos smirked. "Wow. He seems to be making a habit of saving my life," he joked.  
I didn't smile back. "And you seem to be making a habit of putting yourself in situations in which he has to save your life. Carlos, you can't keep doing this to me. Being trapped in my booth while you died in the bowling alley was bad enough, but knowing that if you died it would be partially my fault is just too much. I'm sorry I pushed you on the whole dating thing, but if you were uncomfortable with it you could have just talked to me. I would have understood."  
Carlos turned his head away from me, preferring to look at the wall than into my eyes. "No you wouldn't," he said. "You always know who and what you are, and you're never ashamed to tell everyone about it. You can't possibly understand what it's like to hate a part of yourself as much as I do."  
"Maybe not, but I'm even less likely to catch on if you don't even try to tell me things. Come on. Try me."  
Carlos said nothing, just turned his head farther away from my searching eyes.  
"Carlos," I said, more than a little irritated now, "I risked losing my job and quit work early yesterday to go check on you. I dragged you out of a bathtub filled with your own blood, drove you halfway across town at constant risk of being spotted by the Sheriff's Secret Police, carried you to the house of the one person in town I could trust to help you, stayed up all night worrying that I might never be able to see you again in constant knowledge that if you died it would be because I didn't find you fast enough. Then when you were out of danger, instead of going home to relax and get some much-needed sleep I stuck around so you wouldn't have to wake up to an empty room in a strange house. I am tired, I am hungry, I spent most of the night stressed out of my mind, all because of you. So I don't think it's too much to ask for you to explain why I had to spend the past sixteen hours in my own personal bubble of hell!"  
Carlos stared at me in shock as his deoxygenated brain tried to process my sudden outburst.  
I looked down at my folded hands. "I'm sorry I yelled. I know that's not what you need right now. It's just been a really, really long night."  
Carlos slowly slid off the high bed and into the chair next to me. "No, Cecil," he said, "I'm sorry. I never wanted to hurt you. I just couldn't stand it any longer." There was just a hint of a hitch in Carlos' voice. "I couldn't deal with the guilt that went along with dating you."  
"Alright. No dating. Got it. But you've got to tell me when you're feeling like this, Carlos. We could have stopped dating long ago, or just never started. You can't live your life with nobody knowing how you really feel."  
Carlos sighed. "Okay, I'm sorry. No more secrets."  
"Promise?"  
"Yeah. C'mon Cecil, you can trust me."  
"I thought I could. Then I found you in a bloody bathtub, and now I'm not so sure."  
"Well, you know it all now. It was all in the note. You know I felt guilty, you know I hate myself, there's really not much else to know."  
"Really." I reached into my pocket and withdrew a bottle of pills I had taken from Carlos' flat, placing it on the table.  
Carlos stared at the bottle.  
"You went through my stuff!" He seemed very offended.  
"You tried to kill yourself!"  
"That is a total violation of my privacy!"  
"Blood! Bath! Life! Saved!"  
Carlos sighed. "Fine. Yes. I take Prozac. I have since I was young. Some days I don't need it. Some days everything's fine. I feel completely happy and alive. Then other days, it's all I can do to make myself get up in the morning."  
"Like a tree cut down to make gravestones?" I asked. I have found that things are less terrifying when they are expressed poetically.  
"No," Carlos said, familiar with my coping mechanism, "more like a tree being burned down for no reason in the middle of the night and having nothing but paper with which to smother the flames. I hate the pills. I always kind of wonder what is my actual thoughts and what is just the medication. But unfortunately, it's the only thing that seems to work. I'm pretty sure you know everything else."  
"No, I don't. You have a father?"  
Carlos rolled his eyes. "Yes, I have a father. It didn't seem all that important. We haven't talked in years."  
"Why not?"  
"He's very catholic, and I'm not exactly the perfect child in his eyes."  
I raised my eyebrows. Carlos shook his head, smiling a bit at my curiosity.  
"Well, obviously I couldn't tell him I didn't want to date any of the 'good catholic girls' he kept introducing me too. That wouldn't have gone over well. He also didn't like me studying science. He called it 'playing god' and kept insisting that the Bible was the only resource a person needed to understand the world. He used to take it out and read verses at me whenever he thought I needed a refresher course on exactly how damned for all eternity I was. I think he read that book specifically looking for ways to hurt me as much as possible. As soon as I turned eighteen I left home and moved to the city to study science."  
Carlos took a shaky breath and closed his eyes tightly. A single tear ran down his right cheek. I watched him silently until he had collected himself enough to continue.  
"Life was better in the city, but some of the things my father had told me were hard to shake. You would say it was like an ancient song whose words I couldn't quite believe but which I couldn't get out of my head. So I moved again, to Night Vale, hoping that a change of scenery would make it stop, and I met you, and you were beautiful and interesting, and you called me perfect and it was all just too much. The music in my ears got too loud. I'm sorry."  
I looked at the ground.  
"Why didn't you tell me before?" I asked.  
"I've never told anyone before. It's not exactly something you shout from the rooftops."  
I nodded.  
"Night Vale is the best place I have ever lived. I may not really understand your chants and bloodstone circles, but at least whatever gods you have here don't seem to think I'm damned for everything I ever enjoyed." He gave a slight, lopsided smile. "My father would hate it here."  
I didn't know what to say to that, so the two of us sat in silence, listening to our breaths.  
Carlos was the first to speak. "I'm sorry to dump this all on you. My childhood wasn't all that great."  
"It's okay. It's better that I know. Horror stories are easier if somebody else knows them."  
"Are you sure?"  
"Of course, Carlos. I know we can't date and I'm okay with that, but I still love you and I want to help you be happy in any way I can."  
Carlos had snapped to attention in the middle of my speech. He seemed surprised, his mouth forming soundless words for a minute or so before he managed to say something.  
"You… you love me?"  
"Of course, Carlos. You knew that."  
"I guess. It's just… nobody's ever said that to me before."  
"Really?"  
Carlos nodded wordlessly.  
"Well it's true," I said. And it was. Carlos may have trouble expressing himself, and he wasn't that great at calling in advance when he was going to be late, but I loved him. He may not be perfect, but he was perfect to me.  
Carlos smiled, and seemed to relax just a bit.  
"Did I ever tell you why I called you that night after the incident at the bowling alley?" he asked.  
"Yeah," I said. "You said after all that had happened you just wanted to see me."  
Carlos nodded. "That's right, but it's not quite the whole story. When I first came here, I heard you on the radio talking about my perfect hair and teeth and how much you wanted to hurt Telly for ruining my looks. It scared me a bit. I saw you as a sort of a test. A temptation to do evil. Leftover thoughts from my childhood I never quite shook free from. I assumed your love was only physical, because that's what I was always told love between two men was. On the day I went to investigate the city under the bowling alley, when the tiny people attacked me, your show was playing on the radio in the bowling alley. As I lay bleeding, thinking I was dying, I heard you crying over the fact that you would never speak to me again. It was the most genuine emotion I had ever heard in my life. That's why I called you. You made me see that a man could love me in a way that was pure and innocent, not just an evil desire to pull me from my father's so-called 'path of righteousness'".  
"I do love you, Carlos. I may not be as smart as your scientist friends, but I do know one thing. I know I love you with all my heart, and I always will"  
I looked into Carlos' soft brown eyes, now filled with tears. He smiled a bit and reached his unbandaged hand towards me to touch my cheek. His hand was cold, but I leaned into its gentle pressure anyways.  
"I love you, too," he whispered.  
Carlos leaned towards me, his lips slightly parted, softly guiding my face up towards his.  
I pulled back slightly and he stopped.  
"What's wrong?" he asked.  
"Carlos, are you sure you want to do this? No horrible guilt? No righteous path?"  
He smiled and looked directly into my eyes.  
"I'm sure."  
I was tired and hungry. He was still unstable from blood loss. Both our faces were wet with tears.  
But it was the best kiss of my life.


End file.
